Mental Illness Can Make Some Feel Isolated and Alone

A writer shares how bipolar disorder makes him feel.

An isolated person peaking through window blinds.Photo bysomething magicalonUnsplash

Recently, I witnessed an emotional social media conversation about mental illness. One user commented about how their experience felt unlike any of the other experiences they had heard. As isolating as mental illness can be, their unique struggles made them feel even more alone. The comments I read have stuck with me since.

Living with mental illness is a lonely journey. When the mental illness is bipolar disorder, isolation seems to increase, or at least it feels like it does.

What do you do if your experience differs from anyone else’s? Does that mean you’re somehow strange? Are you somehow divergent from everyone else with the same diagnosis?

Let's consider some facts about you and mental illness.

Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional. All of my online content is written based on my personal experiences with bipolar disorder and those of people close to me.

You are different

There is no cookie cutter way to describe mental illness. As no two people are exactly the same, no two experiences with mental illness will be the same. Let’s take bipolar disorder as an example.

With bipolar disorder, there are two dominant types: type 1 and type 2. Many mental health professionals believe there are five or more unique types. However, just because you have the same type as someone else, the symptoms you experience may manifest differently.

Bipolar disorder is most commonly known by its alternating episodes of mania and depression. It stands out from other mental illnesses in the extremes of these two states.

Not everyone experiences these two extremes the same way. Some people are rapid-cycling, meaning they can go from one state to the other within a few days or hours. Other people cycle slowly and may go days, weeks, or months in the same episode. It’s also common for some to stay manic or depressed for more than a year at a time.

The severity of the cycles also varies from person to person. Mania for one person might mean cleaning excessively or experiencing insomnia, while for another it might make them to think they can safely jump off a building and fly like Superman. Depression might manifest as a mild-to-moderate lack of motivation or the complete inability to get out of bed or bathe yourself.

If your mental illness appears different from others, it does not diminish the impact of your illness or what you are suffering. Your pain is just as real. Your hell is your hell, and it’s just as bad as anyone else’s.

You need more detail

Frequently on social media, I’ll see people comment about how they want to see posts about what it feels like to live with mental illness. They read all the articles about ways it manifests and symptoms and signs to look for, but they want something deeper.

This is a goal I try to reach with my writing, but, truth be told, it’s a tough thing to do. How do you describe the blackest darkness to someone who’s never seen it? Which words do you use to describe what it’s like to live with your worst enemy inside your head? How do you explain to someone what it’s like to live with constant voices inside your head or visual and auditory hallucinations?

In addition, mental illness changes your perception of the world. Bipolar disorder can work like an unreliable translator and change what you hear from what was intended by the speaker. While most days you can communicate just fine, other days you can’t trust anything you think or hear.

When you’re in the grips of a mental illness attack—and let’s face it, there’s no better word to describe mental illness than “attack”—it can distort everything about your world.

At times, you may find hidden meaning in what people say or in the things they don’t say. You may be angry for no reason and lash out at loved ones. Alternatively, you may close up entirely and not say anything for fear of embarrassing yourself or hurting someone.

What it feels like

Since every person experiences it uniquely, I can't say exactly how it feels to live with bipolar disorder. I can tell you what it's like for me, but even then you may not fully understand without being inside my head. Trust me, that can be a scary place you don’t want to be.

This inability to explain your mental illness makes you feel isolated. Part of it is the surrounding stigma, and part is the reality that if you don’t have a mental illness, it’s impossible to understand fully just how debilitating it can be.

Parts of my mental illness have stabilized with time. Now that I’m on the right combination of medications, I seldom have the extreme highs or lows that got me into trouble in the past. Yet, with my passing age, other symptoms have gotten worse.

My anxiety seems to increase from year to year. That’s only compounded as I see the scary things happening in the world. Social anxiety often keeps me home and causes me to cancel plans or decline invitations. It’s not that I don’t want to be with my friends. The mere thought of being in a social setting can cause so much stress that it makes me physically sick.

Driving is also a struggle. The closest grocery store to my house is less than three miles away, yet there are days I can’t make the drive. You can imagine the fun I have on the days when I have to go to my second office, which is a 40-mile drive one way. It’s amazing I make it there in one piece.

With age, I also tend to isolate myself more. The trend is partially because I know how many people I’ve hurt over the years by the things I’ve said or done in a fit of bipolar anger. Even though I may not have meant the words, they still cut just as deep, and the people I hurt still bear those scars.

While I try my best to be a good person, there are times I avoid people just to be safe. It’s another way that mental illness can isolate you.

Person taking a picture of the sunrise.Photo byJordan McQueenonUnsplash

It’s not all gloom and doom

Another reason I seldom write about how mental illness feels is because writing the words feels too negative and discouraging. My biggest goals with my writing are to encourage others and to put positive light in the world. That goal sometimes makes me apprehensive to speak my truth.

More and more though, I’m finding that people need to hear those words. There needs to be validation and understanding. People need to understand that you can want to kill yourself even though you have a smile on your face or laugh at a joke.

Someone needs to explain how depression can take everything from you, making it impossible for you to bathe, get dressed, or leave your house. It’s worth explaining how mental illness never takes a break. While the rest of the world might sleep peacefully at night, you may spend hours awake battling your internal monsters.

Yet, as awful as all those things are, they’re not the only reality. The extremes with bipolar disorder are rarely every day. Most days, you exist somewhere in the middle, and those days are bearable. It’s a truth you must hold onto to make it through the hard days.

Proper treatment of your illness can make it better. I work a full-time job, care for my aging parents, and am an active volunteer. I fight daily to keep going despite my mental illness.

To achieve success, you need to know yourself. No one can treat you or your illness better than you because you’re the only person who knows what’s going on inside.

Not even Mary Poppins can sugarcoat it. Living with mental illness sucks, and it is hell many days, but good days also come along. Those are the ones you have to hang on to.

Until next time, keep fighting.